1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital camera that identifies a feature of a person and implements a focus and exposure actions responsive to a result of the identification.
2. Description of Related Art
Including an authentication system for verifying identity by checking a fingerprint or an iris that was registered in advance, many technologies that identify a person from image data have been known so far. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application H9-251534 has described in detail an identification method in which an eye, nose and mouth etc are extracted and registered as a feature and then, identity is identified by comparing the registered feature with a feature extracted from input image data and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application H10-232934 has disclosed a way to improve an accuracy of an image database dictionary when registering such the extracted feature. Some of examples in which these technologies have been applied to a camera will be given hereunder.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2001-201779 has disclosed that a camera user was registered as reference information and a camera action becomes enabled only when input identification information meets the registered reference information by photographing the camera user with a camera pointing at its face. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2001-309225 has disclosed a camera in which data such as a face coordinate, face dimension, an eye position, a pause of a head and the like recognized in accordance with a face recognition algorithm is stored in an image memory along with image data. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2001-326841 has also disclosed an imaging device (digital camera) that stores identification information (face, fingerprint and palm print) to identify an authentic user beforehand. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2002-232761 has also disclosed an image storage device that stores a photographed image by linking the photographed image to previously read identification information about a subject. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2002-333652 has disclosed an imaging device that generates a storage signal by comparing previously stored profile information with photographed face information. This profile information is stored in a priority order.